by Robin Palmer
“You don’t know that for sure,” Laurel said. “There are many problems that kids go through that are completely universal.”
I read through some of the e-mails. “Oh yeah? How about this one?” I asked. “‘Dear Annie, Yesterday, when I went out to the shed behind our cabin to feed our goats, there was one missing. I cannot say for sure, but I think that my neighbor is responsible for this thievery, especially because he is known as being the meanest boy in my village. My grandmother would like to put a spell on him, but I think that that is not fair until we discover if he is indeed the culprit. Do you agree with this plan of action? I would be most grateful for your advice. Thank you, Concerned in Congo.’” I looked up. “Isn’t Congo in Africa?” I asked.
Laurel nodded.
“Wow. Maybe I’m not completely hopeless at geography like I thought,” I said, impressed.
“Wow. Who knew I had fans who owned goats?” said Laurel, impressed.
“If this ran in the paper, people would get really suspicious,” I said. “Last time I checked, there weren’t a lot of goats running around on the Upper West Side.” There was, however, this guy who walked down Broadway with a cat on his head and would let you take a picture of it for a dollar. Or yell at you really loud and embarrass you in front of everyone if he caught you trying to take one without his realizing it. (Unfortunately, I had firsthand experience with that second part.)
Laurel walked over to me and glanced over my shoulder at the computer screen. “Okay, so maybe the universal things are more like pimples and B.O.,” she said. She pointed to an e-mail that said “Anxious on Amsterdam Ave” in the subject line. “Here—read that one. At least it takes place in Manhattan.”
Unless there was an Amsterdam Avenue in, say, Iran or somewhere like that. I clicked it open.
I opened it. “‘Dear Annie,’” I read, “‘You know this Sadie Hawkins dance that’s coming up? (Of course you do—because you’ve already answered like a million questions about it.) Well, I’d really like to go, and I know who I want to go with, but I have a really big problem: I’m too afraid to do it because I’m afraid he’s going to say no and then I’d feel really stupid. I don’t think it’s a big deal if other people get rejected, but when it comes to me, I just feel way too scared, so I’d rather not take the risk. And I think it would be really sad if I didn’t go because I have a dress picked out and everything. Signed, Anxious on Amsterdam Ave.’”
I sighed. There were a lot of reasons I’d be glad when the dance was finally over, but the main one was that Annie could move on to different topics. Like, say, what to do when your cat hated you and your parents refused to get you a new kitten. Miss Piggy glared at me from her perch near Laurel.
“‘Dear Anxious,’” I typed. “‘Okay, maybe he’ll say no, and if he does, maybe you’ll feel stupid for like two seconds—probably ten minutes at the most—but here’s the thing: If you don’t ask, you’ll never know what his answer will be! And if you don’t know what his answer is, you won’t know if you should bother to shave your legs so they’re not all gross and hairy the day of the dance when you wear the dress. (I guess you could just wear the dress anyway, at home, in your room, and it wouldn’t matter if your legs were hairy because no one else would be seeing them except for your cat, who you would have locked in there because, even though she’s mean to you, you still keep hoping she’ll start being nice to you one day, but that’s a whole other subject.)
“‘Everyone gets scared and everyone is scared of rejection (okay, maybe not a certain girl in our school with the initials C.P., but that, too, is a whole other subject), but recently a very smart person told me that a hero is someone who is scared but doesn’t let that stop them from doing what they’re scared of doing. So my advice to you would be to just take a deep breath, maybe say a little prayer to whoever it is that you pray to when you’re about to do something scary (it doesn’t have to be God, or Buddha—it can just be a doorknob or your favorite pair of sneakers), and then just do it.
“‘If he says yes, great; if not, then, oh well. Either way, then you can take all that time that you’ve been spending thinking about it and put it toward something more interesting . . . like, say, how to get your parents to let you adopt a kitten. Good luck! Annie.’”
I looked at Laurel. “How does that sound?”
She nodded. “Awesome. But you know what this means, don’t you?”
“That someone who works in TV might see this and offer me my own talk show?”
She shook her head. “Nope. That you’re going to have to ask Blair to the dance.”
“What?! Why?”
She shrugged. “Because you wouldn’t be a very good advice columnist if you didn’t take your own advice.”
Again with the you-need-to-take-your-own-advice thing! My eyes narrowed. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s not like anyone would find out that you’re not taking your own advice, but you’d know.”
“Okay, that’s really not fair!” I cried. Recently, I’d started feeling guilty about a lot of things, even though I had no reason to feel guilty about them. Beatrice called it a “Jewish guilt complex,” and said that it had probably developed since I’d moved to New York and been around a lot more Jewish people than I had been in Northampton. And knowing you weren’t taking your own advice would definitely bring on a lot of guilt.
Laurel shrugged again and went back to perfectly balancing on her other leg. “But I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” she said. “Like I said, no one will know that while you’re giving people great advice about being brave, you won’t ask the boy you want to ask to the dance.” She patted my arm. “It’s okay. I understand. It’s fine.”
I sighed. No it wasn’t.
It wasn’t fine at all.
Dear Dr. Maude,
Before I get to the real reason that I’m writing to you, I keep meaning to ask you whether you have an older sister or a frister, and if so, if she was the kind of sister/frister who, when you were young, tried to push you into things using reverse psychology like mine does to me. And if so, because she was an actress, she was able to do it in such a way that you didn’t realize until way after that it was reverse psychology.
Because that’s what Laurel did to me yesterday, and now I have this huge problem (as if I need another one). Not only that, but I’m pretty sure that this e-mail I got from “Anxious on Amsterdam Ave” was actually written by her even though we live on Central Park West rather than Amsterdam.
Okay, so this is my question: Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve given someone advice, but then when you found yourself in the SAME EXACT situation they were in, you weren’t willing to do the very thing that you had told that person they should do, even though it was obviously awesome advice because it came from you? (BTW, if the answer is yes, you don’t have to worry about me telling anyone. I won’t. Because if the situations were reversed, I wouldn’t want people knowing I was a hypocrite. Which, I’m sure you know, is kind of like being a liar, but not exactly.)
That’s the situation I’m in right now—I don’t want to take my own advice. Because even though I told Anxious on Amsterdam that she should just ask the boy she likes, I don’t think that I can do that with Blair.
But I also don’t want to be a hypocrite.
So as you can see, I’m what Alan would call “in between a rock and a hard place,” even though there aren’t any rocks in my room at the moment, and where I actually am is in between a blanket and a sheet.
I know I’ve said at different times that I really, really need advice, but this time I really DO need advice. And fast.
Thanks.
yours truly,
Lucy B. Parker
* * *
The good news about my newest problem was that it took my mind off my old problems. Like, say, how to clean up the mess I had made with my advice to Mom and Alan about their anniversary weekend. At least for a few minutes.
“Hi Lucyloo!” A
lan cried as he stumbled into the apartment with a bunch of bags from Paragon Sporting Goods.
“Hi,” I replied mopily. Having just cured my dad of calling me Monkey in public, I wasn’t thrilled about another dumb nickname, but the fact that Alan had gone to all the trouble to come up with one meant a lot to me. Especially because once I got out of the advice business, he’d probably be disappointed in me and take it away. I pointed at the bag. “What’s that?”
“Just some things I thought might come in handy during our weekend in Vermont,” he replied. He pulled out a pair of snowshoes. “I figured snowshoeing could be fun. A lot less dangerous than downhill skiing. Or even cross-country skiing.”
“But there’s no snow on the ground,” I replied, confused.
He pulled out two tennis racquets. “That’s why I brought these!” He reached into another bag. “And I found a great travel backgammon board. For when we get sick of all that fresh country air.” He walked over and gave me a big hug. “Lucy, I can’t thank you enough for coming up with such a fantastic idea.”
“It wasn’t that great of an idea,” I replied.
He ruffled my hair. “You’re so modest. That’s good. College admissions people like that.”
“I was thinking . . . maybe you should tell Mom about all this,” I said nervously. “Just in case, you know, she doesn’t want to go to Vermont—”
“And ruin the surprise? No way!” He picked up the bags. “Now I’m going to go hide these in my office so she doesn’t find them.”
As he walked away, I sighed. The fact that I couldn’t get up the guts to tell Alan what a mess I’d made kind of made me a hypocrite as well.
I’m not a big pray-er, even though THAT probably made me a hypocrite, too, seeing that I had told Anxious to pray to a doorknob and ask for courage before she asked the boy to the dance. But before I went to sleep that night, because Dr. Maude still hadn’t written me back (I practically drained the battery on my iTouch checking all during dinner, until Mom caught me and said she’d take it away from me for good unless I stopped), I decided to give it a try. Not praying-for-courage-to-ask-Blair-to-the-dance, but just praying-to-figure-out-what-the-heck-I-should-do. I even decided to stand in front of the doorknob in order to take care of the hypocrite issue.
“Hi . . . Go—” I was about to say God, but then I decided that if there was an actual person named God, He or She might feel really insulted to be grouped in with things like doorknobs.
“Hi, Bud—” I was going to say Buddha, until I decided that even though from everything Mom and Dad had told me about the guy, he was a lot more easygoing and laid back than God, even someone like that might be offended by the doorknob thing. I sighed. This praying thing was tricky.
“Hi . . . Doorknob,” I finally landed on. Because whatever I was praying to was really smart, it would know that I really meant Him or Her. “My name is Lucy B. Parker and . . . wait, hold on a sec,” I said as I kneeled down so I was on my knees like the praying people you saw in movies. “Okay. That’s better. Anyway, as I was saying, I’m not sure if You remember me on account of the fact that we don’t talk all that often, but I hope You won’t hold that against me and instead help me out here because I really really really need it.”
I stopped for a second to see if there was any answer, even if it was just a book falling off my bookshelf, which is also something that happened in movies when people were talking to God or ghosts, but nothing happened. Other than me burping, which I really hoped He/She knew wasn’t because I was being disrespectful but because we had had couscous for dinner, which, for some reason, always made me burp afterward.
“Sorry about that. So listen, it’s kind of a long story, so I won’t go into all of it right now, plus, because You’re You, You probably already know what this is about because I’m pretty sure You’re psychic and can therefore read my mind. So, if that’s the case, You know what I’m talking about here is needing a sign as to whether I should take my own advice and tell Beatrice I kind-of-sort-of may like her brother and then ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance.”
I got quiet again in case the sign came at that moment—like, say, in the form of Miss Piggy upchucking a hairball—but all she did was stare at me from the corner with what I swear was a “You are sooo weird” expression on her face. (She hated me so much that she wouldn’t even lie on my bed unless I physically held her down there. But Laurel’s bed? She jumped right up there and wouldn’t get down even when you said, “Come on, Miss Piggy, it’s dinnertime.”)
“Okay, well, I guess the sign will come later then,” I continued. “But if You could just really make it clear as to whether the answer is yes, I should ask him, or no, I should not, I’d appreciate that. So I’m going to stand up now, if that’s okay, because this kneeling thing is really uncomfortable. Plus, I have to pee.” I stood up. “I hope You have a good night, wherever You are. Bye. Oh, and thank You very much in advance. Yours truly, Lucy B. Parker.”
Huh. That wasn’t half as scary as I thought it would be. In fact, maybe if this all worked out, I’d do this praying thing on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, by the time I left for school the next morning, no signs had shown up. No weird dreams or rattling windows while I slept. That kind of thing happened a lot when we lived in Northampton because our house was over a hundred years old, which meant that things were always rattling or creaking or breaking, but in New York, everything was new, because Alan had had the apartment redone a year before we moved there. No hairballs when I woke up. I had locked Miss Piggy in my room that night for that very reason. No words spelled out with my cereal the next morning.
And if a sign had shown up as I was walking to school with Beatrice, it’s not like I would’ve noticed, because that’s when the Question Incident happened, and if I had learned anything over the last year, it was that when Incidents with Capital I’s were happening, everything else kind of fell to the side because they were so dramatic.
Our walk started off normal. Like always, I was late (this time it was because I kept running back to my bathroom to see if a sign had appeared on the mirror), which, like always, made Beatrice all annoyed. And like always, we stopped at Hakim’s cart for doughnuts. But soon after that, as I was brushing off the powdered sugar that I always managed to get all over my sweater, things changed.
“Lucy, there’s something I need to ask you,” Beatrice said as she marched down Broadway while I ran to keep up with her. (People who had lived in Manhattan their whole lives tended to walk really, really fast.)
“What?” I panted.
She stopped and turned to me. “And I really need you to tell me the truth.”
Stopping short like that almost made me trip, but I managed to keep upright. “Okay, yes, I was praying last night,” I admitted. “It’s not like it’s that big a deal. Lots of people do it!”
She looked confused. “Huh?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Of course I’m going to tell you the truth—you’re my BFF. That would be like number one in our official BFF handbook. What is it that you want to know?” I asked nervously as I applied some Watermelon Lip Smacker. When people started conversations with “And I really need you to tell me the truth,” it usually wasn’t followed with questions like “Where’d you get that barrette?”
“Okay. What I need to know is . . . do you have a crush on Blair?”
Uh-oh. If I threw up at that moment, the sight of cereal mixed with a doughnut was not going to be pretty. “Huh?” I asked nervously. I banged on my left ear. “I think my ear is all clogged up. I didn’t hear what you just said,” I replied, trying to buy some time. I looked up at the sky. “If this is Your idea of a sign, it’s really not fair,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Can you please repeat the question?”
“I said . . . do you have a crush on Blair?”
“Blair who?”
“Lucy!”
“What?! I just want to make sure I
answer your question correctly. I mean, there are a lot of Blairs in the world. There’s, you know, your brother Blair, and there’s, um . . .” Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any others at the moment. Probably because I didn’t know any.
Beatrice put her hand on her right hip and jutted her chin forward, which was code for, Now I’m starting to get really mad. Mom’s way of saying it was crossing her arms in front of her chest and tapping her left foot. Alan’s way of saying it was to call an Emergency Family Meeting and put “Reason Why I Am Disappointed” as the first thing on the agenda.
I looked up at the sky again. “Fine. But I’m going to say it again—NOT FAIR,” I mumbled.
“Lucy, what are you doing?”
I sighed. I guess if I really wanted to, I could lie and say no. And then later on, if the lie was ever discovered, say that the reason I did it was because right before it came out of my mouth, I had been body snatched with the little girl who was screaming as her nanny dragged her down the street because she looked like the kind of kid who lied on a regular basis. Which, as I thought about it, would be another lie, and that wasn’t a good thing. Plus if I did that, then (a) I’d screw up my karma, and (b) God or who/whatever was out there would probably get mad because He/She/It had gone to the trouble of giving me a very clear sign as to what I was supposed to do (i.e., tell Beatrice about the crush).
“Just so I’m completely clear, what you’re asking is whether I have a crush on your brother Blair?” I asked. Beatrice hated to be late—even to places like school—and I hoped that if I kept stalling, she’d just give up and start marching down the street again.
“Yes. That’s what I’m asking.”
I didn’t dare mop my forehead with my sleeve on account of the fact that (a) sweating is a common sign that a person is nervous or embarrassed, and (b) Beatrice was the one who had told me that. “Okay. Well, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said, as I felt a drop of sweat plop down onto my upper lip, “then I guess I have to tell the truth and say that . . . no, I do not have a crush on your brother Blair.”